


Basic Nature

by Ladycat



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/M, Genderbending, Humor, Porn, girl!john
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-12 00:02:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1179514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladycat/pseuds/Ladycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At least when he’d been a guy only the boldest of women would approach him, and even then it'd been easy to shrug and slip away without making too many ripples.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Basic Nature

“Stop hovering!”

McKay ignored him completely. He was much too busy glaring, arms-crossed and radiating as much menace as a short, slightly pudgy scientist could actually radiate, leaning so close to John’s shoulder that a deeper-than-normal inhale would have them touching.

He also wasn’t looking at John at all. “I’m not hovering,” he said, eyes fixed grimly on Laxel, their erstwhile host.

John rolled his eyes. Taking advantage of their proximity, he did bump their shoulders together as roughly as he could manage. Dammit, he missed his _strength_. McKay didn’t even jostle much and certainly didn’t break off his glare-fest. “I’m sorry about him,” John said, smiling charmingly. “He’s just a little—”

“Laxel!” A heavyset older man hurried into the house they’d been put up in, glowering as fiercely as McKay. “Ah, Colonel Sheppard, Dr. McKay, I’m glad you two are settling in. I’ll just take my son, here, and we will leave you to your rest.”

Now Laxel was in on the glaring—what, was it something in the water?—splitting his between his father and McKay. “If the Colonel wishes me to stay,” he started.

“That is out of the question,” his father snapped back and oh.

John blushed. John _hated_ blushing. Bad enough that it used to make his ears red, calling attention to how pointy they were. Now it not only affected his ears, but his _cheeks_ , a light-pink flush that didn’t have even a trace of stubble for cover, and often went down along his chest until he felt like he was being swallowed up in heat, a sure-fire sign that never failed to produce the wrong kind of reaction.

He had a lot of sympathy for Emily and Rachel, now. He used to love the way they blushed, teasing and tormenting them just to see a little bit more pink against the low-cut tops they wore, no matter how angry they got with him each time. 

Why they hadn’t cut his dick off in his sleep, he had no idea. They _should’ve._

“You know, I think we should turn in.” Sounding normal was out of the question but he made his best attempt. Why did he never see these things? At least when he’d been a guy only the boldest of women would approach him, and even then it'd been easy to shrug and slip away without making too many ripples. Now guys _leaned_. And absolutely didn’t take no for an answer until it was shoved down their throats, sometimes with the muzzle of his gun.

Never again would he mentally roll his eyes when Elizabeth pressed for sensitivity training: the next time John caught one of his marines giving this kind of shit to any woman on Atlantis, he was going Lorena Bobbitt on their asses. And then he was going to make them do suicides with Ronon for a _month_. “I’m kinda tired.”

“Yes,” McKay snapped, taking an aggressive step forward. For once, it didn’t look silly. It looked like if Laxel took the step forward he was clearly contemplating, McKay was going to manufacture a bomb out of _air_ and shove it down Laxel’s throat. Which was... surprisingly hot. Also surprisingly possible: adrenaline made McKay faster, smarter, and infinitely more devious. “Leaving would be good. _Right now.”_

“Of course,” Hexal said, bowing from the waist. He had one hand on his son’s neck, forcing him to bow along with his father. “My apologies for disturbing your rest.” Dragging his son out by his ear, both John and McKay clearly heard him say, “Must you go after every off-world female you see? Are our own not good enough for you? And did you conveniently forget that this female happens to be a _military commander_ of her world? I doubt she would kindly take to your unwanted attentions.”

Laxel snorted, saying clearly, “Oh, please. She obviously wanted me.”

John rubbed his forehead. He had to get his damned flirting—totally innocuous, totally unconscious—under control. Being offered the headman’s daughter due to accidental betrothal was way different than being hit up for the headman’s son. Especially since it was only rarely a request for bartering or something equally demeaning—most of the time it was via kidnapping or attempting to blackmail his team.

“How does Teyla do it?” he asked his palms.

“I have no idea, but you better ask her when we see her tomorrow.” The unspoken _because_ hung heavy in the air as Rodney shut and locked their door before taking out his data-tablet to do something arcane to the door’s innards. The Xel had a few Ancient tricks left over, including their locking mechanisms, enough that Rodney was happy staying here a few days.

Had been happy, anyway.

“I don’t know why you’re so upset.” Grumpy and humiliated, John sat on the bed and contemplated his boots. He should probably take them off. And sleep. It’d been going on thirty hours since he’d had a chance to rest and, Laxel aside, the Xel were a good, trustworthy people. He was safe here.

He didn’t want to take his TAC vest off. He was afraid he’d feel naked without it.

“Are you _blind_?” Rodney abruptly shrilled. He was still on his knees by the door, but he’d twisted around to present a red, scowling face in John’s direction. “Do you not understand how many damned signals you give off? _I’m_ picking up on them, Sheppard! You’re like—you’re like a cat in _heat!”_

What the hell? He’s just being friendly, same as always, he had no idea what the hell McKay’s talking about—except that Teyla warned him about this, twice. And even Elizabeth had given him funny looks the past few days, asking several pointed questions that would’ve been _entirely_ inappropriate if he’d still had a dick. Apparently a vagina and breasts came with carte blanche permission for intrusive questions, because she hadn’t been the only one. Heightmeyer had asked some ridiculous questions of her own, and then she’d brought out these damned reference books that had been carted to another galaxy _just in case_...

And every time had been right after—

Dammit. He was blushing again.

“What! Why do you look like you just swallowed a snail?” Rodney’s voice was lower, but still shrill enough that it could’ve come from John’s altered larynx.

“Uh,” he said intelligently. 

“Just shut up.” Turning back to the door, Rodney poked and prodded his tablet for another few moments before levering himself to his feet with a groan. “There. Let’s see that lecherous little creep try and get in _now_.”

John carefully didn’t mention the windows and their cheery, flimsy yellow curtains letting in the cool evening air with only a thin mesh screen to keep out any bugs. He liked fresh air, after all, and didn’t want to lose it.

“Are you okay?”

Rodney didn’t do caring well. It went against his basic nature—self-absorbed and arrogant—to offer any kind of comfort or support to even those he did care about—but he still tried. Okay, so he only started trying after being verbally chastised by Teyla after a particularly horrendous mission, and his attempts were still so painfully awkward as to be useless. But he _tried_.

As a man, John had found those attempts alternatingly amusing or annoying.

Now he found them endearing on a level he wasn’t sure he quite understood.

A warm, solid hand rested on his shoulder. “Did he—before, when I wasn’t here, did he—because I can get Ronon and Teyla and between the three of us, I’m sure we can present his testicles on a silver platter. I’ll mine the silver, if I have to.”

Laughing hurt, bubbling up against a lump in his throat he hadn’t been aware of until that moment. “He was hitting on me.”

“Oh, please. He wasn’t hitting on you. That implies some kind of give and take, not—not what he was doing.”

There was a give and take to hitting on a girl? The hell. “Come on, McKay, I’m a guy—”

“And what, I’m a hermaphrodite?” Sitting on the bed next to him, Rodney sighed. “Look. You’re a guy, yes, and as a guy we all have certain... ways of looking at women or whoever or whatever we’re attracted to. A lot of them ignore everything above the neck. But just because the male species might do that a time or two doesn’t mean I’ve ever seen _you_ look at anyone the way that asshole was looking at you. And if you ever caught yourself doing it, you’d be horrified.”

There was a hint of something self-conscious and self-revealing in Rodney’s words. “And you wouldn’t be?”

“I wasn’t until Jeannie finally called me on it.” That was a lie—or at best a partial-truth—but it was all John was going to get right then. Rodney rubbed his face again, then collapsed onto the bed. Sack-of-potatoes wasn’t a good look for him. “I’m not exactly a nice person, and I’ve been accused of seeing people as, um. Objects. Before.”

Shaking his head, John finally took off his tac vest and stretched out on his back next to Rodney. It was... weirdly nice. John was jumpy and nervous around everybody but his team, and even for Ronon and Teyla he had to work at seeming easy and relaxed. For Rodney, he really was relaxed. That made a certain kind of sense, of course, but it wasn’t something John had expected. Or knew how to handle. “You don’t see me as an object.”

“Yes, well, I’ve come a long way since I was twenty three. And you don’t see me look at you all the time.”

Rolling onto his side, John peered down to study Rodney. Same familiar body, same familiar face, filled with eyes that were never familiar because they changed every single time John looked at them. The more he thought about it, the more he understood what kind of look Rodney was talking about: the way Laxel had gazed right through him, possessive and _cruel_ with greed, so alien that John hadn’t even registered it in sheer mental self-defense.

“You’ve never looked at anyone like that,” he said with certainty. “No matter how much you wanted them.”

Rodney snorted, but his cheeks were pink. He reached up to brush a lock of hair behind John’s ear, fingers strangely too big and just right even after three weeks like this. “I’m not a nice man.” He sounded like he was imparting some deep, shameful secret.

John chuckled, leaning forward to kiss Rodney—slow and sweet with only the barest hint of tongue. “I didn’t say you were _nice_ , McKay.”

“Jackass.” Anything else was swallowed into another kiss, this one open-mouthed and hot. Rodney hated when people looked at John like he was somehow different just because he didn’t have a cock anymore, something Rodney never, ever had a problem with. It hadn’t even occurred to him to treat John any differently until he finally realized others _were_.

Then he’d turned into a growling, possessive bear whenever he noticed it—which wasn’t as often as Rodney probably wanted—that John really, really hoped he’d find just as endearing when he was a guy again, because it was incredibly hot as a woman.

Rolling, John straddled Rodney’s waist. “You gonna defend my honor, McKay?”

“Oh, please,” he snorted. “I _need_ to? My earlier comment about testicle presentation aside, once you finally realized what he was doing you’d probably gut him, which was actually what I was trying to prevent. It’s so messy when you kill the chief’s son, and really, blood and viscera is not a—mmph. Mmm.”

Kissing Rodney as a woman was exactly like kissing Rodney as a man. It was one of the more reassuring constants in life and something he clung to when everything got overwhelming and he felt like he’d been on the tilt’o’whirl a few too many times. Same desperate grabbiness, same silent demands, same reactions from John. Nice.

“Do you know why he was looking at me like that?” John asked, wriggling a little. Being a little lighter as a woman had its advantages and being able to lay comfortably on Rodney without suffocation complaints was one of the best.

Instead of playing along, Rodney’s face darkened. “Because he’s an oversexed little jerk who—”

Yeah, totally not where John wanted to go. With a sigh, he slapped a hand over Rodney’s mouth, riding out the muffled _ow_ that immediately followed. “Not that, asshole. Do you know why I was—why he thought I might be turned on? Because I was.”

His face felt so, so hot.

Rodney finally got with the program, scowl lightening into furrows of confusion. “Ghow?” he asked through John’s hand.

Smirking, John rocked his hips so that he rubbed in just the right way. It was humiliating to know this had taken practice to get right, but along with learning his new mass and balance, he’d also had to relearn how to have successful sex. Fortunately that part had been both enjoyable and enthusiastic on both sides. “Because I was watching you, Rodney.”

Free of John’s hand, Rodney didn’t immediately launch into how amazing it was that he turned John—male or female—on. “When I was doing repair work?” he asked blankly.

John rocked again, lined up perfectly where Rodney’s body, at least, proved that it was definitely on the right page. “Yeah,” he said raggedly. Even picturing it was—nice. Really nice. The way Rodney’s arms flexed, sunlight glinting off the almost reddish hair, his back a lot stronger and much more stable than Rodney’s complaints indicated. The way his neck corded as he lifted things, or his swooping, stabbing fingers as he gestured and ordered and directed without ever saying anything—although he did that plenty, too. And the way he bent over, exposing that tight, perfect—

“You were staring at my ass? But—I mean, you can’t do anything with it.” 

Rodney was genuinely too confused to be annoyed, and John counted that as a win. Shaking his head—which, incidentally, shook his boobs into Rodney’s nose—he scooted down for another long, slow kiss that didn’t stay slow for very long.

“I—you like watching me?” Rodney asked, panting a little as John lay a string of kisses from chin to ear. “When I’m working?”

“And you don’t?” John countered.

“Well, yes, but you knew that.” Rodney licked his lips, craning his neck to nip right below John’s ear, a place that had the same low, shivery affect regardless of gender. “I mean, hell, _everybody_ knows that, even if they don’t know about the whole sleeping together thing, because I am certainly not the only one to think you are so, so hot when you get all focused and angry and—mmph! Hey! No more interrupting me with kissing!”

John laughed until his shoulders hurt, falling onto the bed as Rodney scrambled out of his clothes and began yanking John out of his. “Yeah, but it’s so much fun,” he teased. 

He didn’t help. He didn’t need to. Both of them were practiced at stripping the other, and it felt good to lie there and let Rodney bare him to cool air that smelled like flowers and Rodney’s sweat and lust. To tangle around Rodney as soon as the condom was on, slipping down and over without even a hitch of discomfort because he was so wet, so ready just from Rodney bustling around and running his mouth like usual, and protecting John only when John needed it—only when John didn’t know he needed it—and this was his, his, all his, didn’t matter if he had a dick or a cunt, because Rodney wanted _him_ , touched him, came for him; pushed John against the bed and made him scream and scream, loud enough that everyone had to hear, _for me, for me, mine._

“Do you really think people don’t know?” John asked later, sleepy and sated and grinning like a loon. They were tangled up together, Rodney almost flattening him onto the bed instead of simply spooning.

“Shut up and go to sleep, Colonel.”

In the darkness, John’s grin got bigger. “Jackass.”

“Bitch.”

“Hey! No female insults!”

“Fine. Fuckhead.”

“You’re a fuckhead.”

“Well, I guess we’re evenly matched then. Sleep!”


End file.
